Car Roofs are the Perfect Place for Bonding
by OccasionallyIWriteStuff
Summary: After a long day of travel, Blake and Yang decide to stop their car and rest in the middle of the desert once the sun goes down. With nothing else to do, they climb onto the car roof and start stargazing. They learn more about their companion in the process as they both share personal things that they never really thought to share before. Roadtrip AU. Bumbleby one-shot.


_A/N: Hey guys. We are in weissrabbit's roadtrip AU this time. If you are interested in it, I suggest checking out their tumblr. This piece isn't necessarily angsty, but it certainly isn't happy. I'd say it's mostly emotion and about Blake and Yang bonding on the roof of a car in the middle of nowhere. There is some alcohol mention just so you know. Enjoy._

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Yang leaned forward so she was sitting up so that she could take a gentle sip of her beer, the sweat-covered glass and bitter taste a sharp contrast to the dry, desert air. Yesterday morning, just before they hit the road again, Yang had managed to convince a dopey blonde cashier that she was the legal age without her ID and grabbed a six pack of beer for the road. While she knew that Blake didn't like to drink very much, the beer was more for the social stigma than the actual process of getting drunk.

And since the sun had gone down an hour ago, and they were stopped in the middle of the desert; with the most interesting thing being the dry, crack ground, and the nearest town a hundred miles away, it was decided that drinking the sour ale would be the only way to pass the time tonight while they participated in their usual pastime of stargazing.

"Nice night, huh?" Yang looked over her shoulder and at the girl lying down next to her on the roof of the car. Her companion, Blake Belladonna, had her arms by her sides and her beer resting on her stomach; it being balanced by her hands with the condensation beginning to soak through her purple tank-top. Blake's eyes, which weren't focused on anything specific in the night sky, shifted so that they pointed at Yang.

Blake shrugged. "It's hot." Her eyes moved back up to the sky, presumably to continue searching for constellations she could identify. If they traveled a lot that day, or if they were in the middle of nowhere, Blake liked to find the constellations; despite the images not having moved that far from the previous night. Yang didn't know why, but she accepted and always paid attention when Blake pointed one out and asked questions when she could. As nice and comfortable as it was to be around the quiet girl, it was difficult to hold conversations with her sometimes and if astronomy got her talking, then astronomy would have to work.

Yang thought for a second before replying. It was hot. It was _very _hot. A light coat of sweat was starting to form on her body and it was making her shirt unusually sticky. Usually the heat didn't bother her, but apparently, tonight was an exception. She paused a moment longer before downing the rest of her beer and placing the empty bottle next to the two already resting on the trunk next to her feet. "You mind if I take off my shirt?"

Blake's eyebrows shot up to hide beneath her bangs. She craned her neck a bit and looked towards the road that wasn't more than twenty feet away. There were no cars coming from either direction, but it was more of the implication that counted. Blake turned back to Yang, "If you want to, I don't mind. But I'm not going to vouch for you when the cops grab you for public nudity."

Yang snorted and grabbed at the bottom of her top, pulling it over her head and revealing a neon yellow bra. She leaned over the edge of the car and tossed the fabric in through the open window she found, "You have to actually be naked for it to count Blake. Besides, don't you think I could get us out of trouble with a cop if something happened?" She winked playfully at Blake, who was staring intently upwards. Apparently she found something very interesting up there.

Blake rolled her eyes with a slight smile on her face that betrayed the neutral tone of her voice, "You would probably only end up getting yourself in more trouble. And what do you mean 'we?' What makes you think I won't just keep going without you?"

A sharp _hiss_ came from the next bottle of beer as Yang pulled the cap off. She was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol on her body and her eyes were failing to keep up with her head turning back to look at Blake. "Aw, come on! You love me too much to leave me in jail in the middle of nowhere." Yang smiled, her teeth brilliantly bright in the lowering light.

Blake grimaced and brought her mouth into a tight line, nodding her head twice. "Yep, that's it. That's definitely it. That's why I decided to go on this trip with you. Because I'm in love with you." Her voice was thick with sarcasm, but Yang wasn't offended; that was just Blake's type of humor. The sassy girl sat up so she could take a sip of her beer, making a face after she pulled away from the opening and sticking out her tongue after swallowing. "Bleh!" With a pointed motion, Blake placed the beer on the trunk of her car, next to her sneakers and leaned back so that she was lying down again.

Yang motioned to her body with her free hand, face full of confidence and cheeks slightly rosy, "How could you not?" She took another swig of beer, the taste lost to her mouth. Another smile, just as brilliant as the first came out and shined on Yang's face.

Another roll of the eyes, "Yeah, cause that's what I care about. A hot piece of ass."

"Well it's a good start. And then you got to know me and I became irresistible."

Blake blinked and looked at Yang with a hint of dark amusement on her face. "We don't even know each other that well, Yang."

Yang was about to give a sharp response, but bit it back and thought for a second. Blake wasn't entirely wrong. They had talked and hung out quite a few times before graduation and then their road-trip began, but none of the conversations had been particularly deep. Mostly just Yang talking about the popular life and its gripes with Blake listening and adding an occasional comment. They didn't really know anything more about each other than what they had been able to piece together with the small hints the other had provided. That wasn't how friends should be treating each other.

Yang smiled again, "Well then we should change that! Let's play a game." Blake's eyebrows rose again, but she didn't protest so Yang took it as an invitation to continue. "We each ask the other a question; no lying but you can pass if you _really, really _want to. If you pass three times you have to do whatever the other person asks you to as punishment. Sound fair?"  
Blake frowned a bit, eyebrows furrowed, a few lines appearing on her forehead and giving her a very cute look that Yang couldn't help but take note of. Blake didn't look very interested by the proposition, and Yang turned away, thinking that she was going to receive a rejection when Blake's voice came again.

"Sure. You go first."

Yang whipped her head back and beamed, almost sending herself off the car in the process. She was in no state for any motion that was as fast as 'whipped.' "Okay, uh," Yang placed her right index finger on her bottom lip, humming with thought. She didn't want to get too personal on the first question. It might make her seem like she was prying too much. Instead she would keep it nice and easy, "What's your favorite color?"

"Purple. Why do you pretend to be happy when you're not?"

Yang choked on the beer that she had been sipping, coughing hard and spraying the liquid everywhere. Right for the jugular. Yang moved her head so that she was staring off the trunk end of the car and placed her beer next to the other bottles. It wasn't empty, but the alcohol instantly lost its appeal when Blake asked her question. Underage drinking felt very wrong and like a coping mechanism all of a sudden.

Yang took a heavy breath and then exhaled it slowly and all at once. "I…" Yang bit her lip. Her mind was a bit fuzzy and it was difficult to think clearly. "That's a tough one," she laughed nervously. "Uh, I guess it's because I shouldn't be sad. I know I shouldn't be sad, but I am. I'm popular and have friends and get good grades and have a loving family and everything is perfect in my life, but I am still sad. I dunno, sometimes it just feels like it's easier to pretend I'm happy than deal with the fact that I'm not." Yang ran a hand through her hair, still facing away from Blake, "And I have to be that way for Ruby. She's so smart and full of life I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I brought her down by accident or something, ya know?" She turned to Blake and smirked, her mouth a thin line. "I guess the answer would be because it is easier."

Blake's expression betrayed no change in emotion on immediate inspection but Yang could feel her understanding. Yang could feel that Blake had been or was in a very similar situation in her life. Maybe it was the way that she had a gentle frown on her face. Or maybe it was the slight turn of her eyebrows. Or maybe it was the gentle pout that Blake had on her lips. Blake's face wasn't nearly as expressive as Yang's, but Yang could see everything she needed to if she just looked for it. It was a nice change from the overly nice and sappy smiles of her friends at school that hid their true faces and emotions. Blake didn't do that. She let everything show, but only if you looked for it.

"Yang, you okay?" Blake snapped her fingers infront of Yang's face and waved them a few times. Yang nodded and gave a thumbs up, though she didn't think Blake believed her from the frown that occupied her face. Or maybe that was her normal look. Either way, Yang had most definitely not gotten lost looking at Blake's facial features. She had just spaced out because she was tipsy.

"I didn't think we were going to get so personal so fast." Yang smiled and laughed a bit. She shifted and decided to lie down instead of remaining sitting up. While sitting was nice, moving her head and retaining her balance was becoming difficult. Not to mention the fact that the air was still uncomfortably warm and the metal of the car pressed against her back would probably help Yang cool down. The cheerleader let out an exhale as she lowered her back to the roof of the car, bare feet resting on the top of the trunk next to the bottles there. She moved and put her arms behind her head, somehow managing to not elbow Blake in the process. "I was just a bit surprised is all."

Yang felt Blake shift her weight a bit, rocking the car. No doubt that she was making room for Yang on the roof of the car so that neither of them would feel crowded. "Sorry."

Yang shrugged, her shoulders rubbing against metal. "It's fine. I just don't know what to ask you now." She laughed, the sound cutting through the silence of the night air. "Hmmm," She knew exactly what she wanted to ask, but didn't want it to seem like she had been planning it. So she faked a few more seconds of thought before finally asking, "Why do you push people away?"

A sharp intake of breath and a sharp exhale. An expected questioned by the sound of it. A few loud _taps_ sounded and revealed a slight bit of anxiety on Blake's part. Yang noticed that whenever a stressful or unpleasing topic came up, Blake always tapped her fingers on the nearest surface. The first time Yang had noticed it had been in the diner when they were hanging out after school. Yang had been talking about how she didn't want to go home and had asked Blake about her homelife. _Tap-tap-tap_. After that, Yang always tried to change the subject whenever the tapping came.

"You can pass if you want to."

"And leave my friend behind?" It was a stretch of a reference but it was the closest that Blake had come to making an outright _joke_ since they had started talking to each other, earning a laugh in response. "No, it's fine." Blake's voice sounded very tired and heavy, like something was weighing it down.

"I'm kinda in the same place as you. Sorta. My family is nice and they try really hard to be nice to me and make me happy, but I just can't connect. I don't really know why, but it feels like I just can't connect and open up to anybody really. My biological parents died when I was too young to remember it, but from what I can tell, no one in the family wanted to keep me so I went into the system. And then my best friend, a guy named Adam, who had been with me for years in foster care, went off and left me too. It's not his fault that he got adopted and he still visits when he can; and it's not my biological family's fault that nobody was prepared to deal with another child. But I dunno, why should I trust people and let them in when everyone I have ever been close to has either given me up or abandoned me? Just hurts less to keep people away than to let them in and get hurt later."

Yang whistled. She didn't know what to say. "That's rough."

"Yeah."

Silence filled the night air. It wasn't uncomfortable by any means, but was filled with the weight of the conversation. Yang didn't know how to lighten the load. She had tried to talk to her parents about her depression and they had always said it was a phase and that it would get better soon and it always seemed clichéd but that's all Yang could think to say to Blake. Everything that Yang wanted to say was exactly what she knew wouldn't help. She bit at a few words and swallowed them back before she decided what to say.

"Well, I can't go anywhere since it's your car; so feel free to let me get as close as possible." Yang scooted her body closer to Blake's, rocking the car in the process. The two were only separated by about a half foot of space now. Yang was beginning to be able to feel Blake's body heat mesh with her own and the subtle scent of lilacs was playing at the edge of her nose. Something formed in the bottom of Yang's stomach but she couldn't figure out what before Blake responded;

"Yeah, I want the half-naked chick on top of my car to be close to my _soul_. That's definitely what I would want from that."

This time, Yang's eyebrows were the ones to shoot up. "Are you flirting with me Belladonna?" Again, that thing in her stomach came up and a bit of heat rose to her face. The alcohol was really affecting her tonight.

A tap of the fingers. "I have no clue what you're talking about. So Ruby is your sister?"

It didn't sound like a question but Yang took it to be a general inquiry about Ruby. Blake hadn't been over Yang's house before they left on their trip so there was no way that she could have met the younger girl. Then again, Blake had rejected every offer to hang out at Yang's house every time she offered, choosing to only hang out in public places like the library or the diner; but that wasn't really any of Yang's business right now.

"Yeah, Ruby is my little sister." She didn't realize it, but Yang let out a happy sigh. "She's basically perfect. She's smarter than me and she's nice and friendly to everyone and volunteers everywhere she can." Another happy sigh. "She's just, I dunno. She means a lot to me. If I had to be miserable for the rest of my life just so that she could be happy for the rest of hers, I would do it in a second. She wouldn't want me to, cause she cares about me and looks up to me too much, but I would." A smile had snuck onto her face without permission, but Yang let it stay. "I love Ruby."

"She sounds really nice." Blake's voice sounded closer than before so Yang turned her head to look at her friend. She found Blake staring at her, amber eyes burning into her. Yang met Blake's eyes and smiled as best she could. For a few seconds, the contact remained, unbroken and sincere. _Tap!_ "I'll have to meet her sometime." Blake turned her head back towards the stars, breaking the contact and leaving Yang staring at her ear and worrying about the way her stomach was feeling.

"Yeah. Maybe when we find another library we can video-call her or something." Yang turned her head away from Blake's head, returning to the stars above. While she wasn't very into astronomy, it was really amazing how many stars she could see without any light pollution from surrounding cities. She had learned about that in class a thousand times over, but only seeing it could really put the beauty and majesty into perspective.

So they were on people now. Yang didn't really want to know anything about Blake's adopted family, given the way that they treated her she figured they probably wouldn't get along, but there was someone else that Yang wanted to know about. "Who's Adam? You've mentioned him a few times and I guess I'm just kind of curious. Boyfriend? Friend? Person you just made up to make me think you had friends at one point?" Yang smiled at her own dig. Sometimes she was really funny.

A few taps and then a heavy sigh. "It's complicated with Adam." Blake sounded exhausted. Yang couldn't be so sure what she was so exhausted with, but she had a feeling that it had nothing to do with the time of night it was.

"We were in the same orphanage for a while and we kinda stuck to each other. It was us against the world for a long time." Something came into Blake's voice that tinted her words with bitterness. It made Yang uncomfortable how much pent-up anger were in her words. "And then he got adopted and went off to college since he is two years older than me. And we basically lost touch. He tries to visit on the holidays, but his family usually takes him on vacations or whatever." Yang felt something in her heart that she wasn't entirely unfamiliar with.

"We used to be friends and now we aren't I guess. I dunno."

Yang nodded a few times and succeeded in rocking the car, the gentle motions threatening to put her to sleep. She was more tired than she thought. "Maybe we can visit him while we are out and about on this wonderful adventure of ours."

"Maybe." Blake went silent for a moment before voicing her next question. "Why are we in the middle of nowhere, in a desert, with someone we barely know trying to drive around the country?"

Yang pursed her lips, trying to think of a response. It would have been easy to make a joke or play it off as a non-serious question, but Blake seemed very serious about her inquiry. And it wasn't like she was wrong to ask the question either. They had only been friends for two or three weeks before deciding to leave town on their adventure. And they were only about five days travel away from home so they were still close enough to turn back if they got any sense into their heads tonight. So why were they on this trip?

"To get away from it all." Yang smiled, knowing she had found the right answer. They had discussed it in the diner briefly, but it didn't have the same understanding that it did now that they knew a little bit more about the other.

"To get away from your parents and school and Ruby and Adam and just everything. You can't really do that with someone you are super close to, cause they would just be part of the problem then wouldn't they?"

Silence.

"That makes a lot of sense, thank you."

Yang scooted closer to her friend, trying to close the gap between them. It was starting to cool down and Yang was regretting having taken her shirt off. Luckily though, Blake didn't move and let Yang press their bodies together. She smiled as their sides pressed together and a an electric spark travelled up Yang's ribs and to her chest. "No problem, partner."

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_A/N: Fun fact, this got longer than I thought it was going to be and I cut out the part where Yang asks Blake about her past relationships and it leads to Yang offering to teach Blake how to kiss. Also didn't really fit the tone of the piece. Maybe I'll have to write another one in this AU for when they are on their way back home and passing through the desert again. Leave a review, favorite, flame or whatever. This is a one shot, so you know. Thank you for reading.  
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_Edit: I made a spiritual successor. It's called **Beach Towns are the Perfect Place for Confessions** if you want to check that out. It takes place about a month and a hlaf after this fic and is a bit more heavy on the romance than this one was._


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